The real winner is the kid who got sent home cause he couldn't ollie high enough... he had to put up with the least amount of this horse shit.And I'm probably gonna get a lot of hate for this but Steve Rodriguez came off as a real tool in this. Which is weird cause he always seemed like a cool dude before.

Last year was soo good. Why would one ever change it. I dont get it at all. Can someone from Slap pls comment on that?

the producer/director was given full creative control this time. last year, whitely had control. this year, alex klein was given control. he wanted to make it so it could be sold to a major network, etc. everyone disagreed and fought with him on it--all the park skating, dumb challenges, etc--but he had a contract and would not back down. he wanted the show to be "accessible to people who didn't skate"; he wanted it to be able to be watched by fucking football players. the judges, who i think ended up not being paid, were all so bummed and tried to change klein's mind at the end, but i guess they had signed contracts and couldn't get out of being in the final show. billy rohan quit. at the end, lou basically tried to fight klein. so did some of the contestants.

eventually, the contestants said "fuck this" to the challenges and interviews and shit, and refused to do them. another problem was the HD camera crew klein hired--they didn't skate, and didn't care about the kids. so finally i just stole them all from the house of vans and left all the HD dudes behind.

Last year was soo good. Why would one ever change it. I dont get it at all. Can someone from Slap pls comment on that?

the producer/director was given full creative control this time. last year, whitely had control. this year, alex klein was given control. he wanted to make it so it could be sold to a major network, etc. everyone disagreed and fought with him on it--all the park skating, dumb challenges, etc--but he had a contract and would not back down. he wanted the show to be "accessible to people who didn't skate"; he wanted it to be able to be watched by fucking football players. the judges, who i think ended up not being paid, were all so bummed and tried to change klein's mind at the end, but i guess they had signed contracts and couldn't get out of being in the final show. billy rohan quit. at the end, lou basically tried to fight klein. so did some of the contestants.

eventually, the contestants said "fuck this" to the challenges and interviews and shit, and refused to do them. another problem was the HD camera crew klein hired--they didn't skate, and didn't care about the kids. so finally i just stole them all from the house of vans and left all the HD dudes behind.

Last year was soo good. Why would one ever change it. I dont get it at all. Can someone from Slap pls comment on that?

the producer/director was given full creative control this time. last year, whitely had control. this year, alex klein was given control. he wanted to make it so it could be sold to a major network, etc. everyone disagreed and fought with him on it--all the park skating, dumb challenges, etc--but he had a contract and would not back down. he wanted the show to be "accessible to people who didn't skate"; he wanted it to be able to be watched by fucking football players. the judges, who i think ended up not being paid, were all so bummed and tried to change klein's mind at the end, but i guess they had signed contracts and couldn't get out of being in the final show. billy rohan quit. at the end, lou basically tried to fight klein. so did some of the contestants.

eventually, the contestants said "fuck this" to the challenges and interviews and shit, and refused to do them. another problem was the HD camera crew klein hired--they didn't skate, and didn't care about the kids. so finally i just stole them all from the house of vans and left all the HD dudes behind.

so yeah. it was a fucking nightmare.

Damn. Thanks for fully shedding the light. It's weird because I kicked it with Alex Klein a good bit when I used to go to SF a lot, a handful of years ago. He was just a normal skate dude. I guess what someone said about his head getting big after the surfing doc must be true. It's hard to imagine a real skateboader pushing for this end product., but...whatever.

Can't wait for your edit. You should just go ahead and put it up. The skating is all anyone wants to see, anyway.

the producer/director was given full creative control this time. last year, whitely had control. this year, alex klein was given control. he wanted to make it so it could be sold to a major network, etc. everyone disagreed and fought with him on it--all the park skating, dumb challenges, etc--but he had a contract and would not back down. he wanted the show to be "accessible to people who didn't skate"; he wanted it to be able to be watched by fucking football players. the judges, who i think ended up not being paid, were all so bummed and tried to change klein's mind at the end, but i guess they had signed contracts and couldn't get out of being in the final show. billy rohan quit. at the end, lou basically tried to fight klein. so did some of the contestants.

eventually, the contestants said "fuck this" to the challenges and interviews and shit, and refused to do them. another problem was the HD camera crew klein hired--they didn't skate, and didn't care about the kids. so finally i just stole them all from the house of vans and left all the HD dudes behind.

Last year was soo good. Why would one ever change it. I dont get it at all. Can someone from Slap pls comment on that?

As it's been said a few times, SLAP, as in the employees who run the site are bummed about how it turned out and had nothing to do with the goofy ideas.

I wasn't around for One in a Million, but here's my best guess as to how it got as wacky as it did:

Forrest pretty much made the show last year. Of course the skating was great, but OIAM wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention if he hadn't been in it. Like Omarossa, Puck, The Situation, or whoever, the wacky characters are what attracts people to reality TV. And don't try and act like OIAM wasn't a reality show last year too, because it was. It was just really well done. But of course, you can't just go on a "new Forrest" search. So instead, the producer/director adds the elimination factor to replace Forrest as the source of drama.

Unfortunately, those ideas were all garbage (and as it's been said, they get even worse) and since the producer/director had been contractually given complete creative control, the new employees of SLAP (Whitely stepped down right before OIAM) couldn't do anything about it. Eliminations might have even worked if skating remained at the forefront of them, but who knows. We'll see how it turns out.

Last year was soo good. Why would one ever change it. I dont get it at all. Can someone from Slap pls comment on that?

As it's been said a few times, SLAP, as in the employees who run the site are bummed about how it turned out and had nothing to do with the goofy ideas.

I wasn't around for One in a Million, but here's my best guess as to how it got as wacky as it did:

Forrest pretty much made the show last year. Of course the skating was great, but OIAM wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention if he hadn't been in it. Like Omarossa, Puck, The Situation, or whoever, the wacky characters are what attracts people to reality TV. And don't try and act like OIAM wasn't a reality show last year too, because it was. It was just really well done. But of course, you can't just go on a "new Forrest" search. So instead, the producer/director adds the elimination factor to replace Forrest as the source of drama.

Unfortunately, those ideas were all garbage (and as it's been said, they get even worse) and since the producer/director had been contractually given complete creative control, the new employees of SLAP (Whitely stepped down right before OIAM) couldn't do anything about it. Eliminations might have even worked if skating remained at the forefront of them, but who knows. We'll see how it turns out.

P.S. Team corndog for life.

Seems like a lot of people tend to forget that OIAM caught a lot of flack last year for the "reality TV" format that the show was done in. It was infinitely better than this year, but it was still a fairly regurgitated TV format. The big difference, though, was skating was still at the forefront. There was drama, and interviews, and all that, but the whole contest was about skateboarding. It was a reality show about skateboarding, not skateboarders on a reality show. The finger painting challenge had nothing to do with skateboarding, and could have made as much sense (none) on any other bullshit TV show.

They could get fat people to Crayola what they want to look like in the future, of Trump could have them make macaroni pictures that represent their newest business plan.